A meritocracy is a complex, dangerous thing – Theresa May must tread carefully

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip arrive on the final day of the annual Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, Britain, October 5, 2016. Credit:
TOBY MELVILLE

The discussion of Theresa May’s debut party conference has been dominated by that inept and – a word famously associated with her – nasty threat to compel companies to list foreign workers as if they were the enemy within. This obtuse bit of populist nonsense was almost certainly designed to accomplish two (very) short-term political ends: to establish the hard‑core Brexit credentials of Mrs May and her Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, and to put Ukip out of business.

The most critical danger in a relentlessly meritocratic society is that those with ability and motivation will be able to rise but leave behind a defeatist underclass. To a considerable extent, this has already happened in Britain.

What should have been the unifying message of the Prime Minister’s rather discursive major speech was the electrifying (and brave) declaration that she made when she entered Downing Street: that the difficulties of working-class people who are struggling to survive (“just managing”) have been largely ignored in fashionable political debate. On that memorable day, her pointed inclusion of white working-class boys among the socially disadvantaged was interpreted as a summoning up of the blue-collar conservatism that had once made the Tories a natural home for C1 and C2 voters. Her conference speech reiterated this detailed point: white working-class boys are less likely to go to university than any other demographic group. But she went on in broader terms, attributing the disregard for working-class interests to the arrogance and contempt of two kinds of elites.

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On the one hand there were the super-rich, whose global financial interests meant they took little notice of the consequences of their actions on the families and communities of their own country. On the other, there were the cosmopolitan liberals who thought that concern for the indigenous population’s low achievers was quaintly parochial and were quite open in their contempt for backward oiks who couldn’t appreciate the joys of diversity.

Ironically, the first of these groups – the global finance tribe – could be assumed to be super-capitalists of the most rapacious kind, while the second – largely London-based sophisticates – saw themselves generally as Left-wing. But both of them could be included in the May denunciation of people who believed themselves to be “citizens of the world”, transcending any sense of belonging to a nation state.

This is what I take Mrs May to have been saying: if you think that you are above the concerns of the country in which you live, that you can disregard the needs and problems of whole tranches of its population, then you are not morally superior, just deluded and self-regarding. One of her most effective lines – that calling yourself “a citizen of the world” shows that you don’t know what the word “citizenship” means – is certainly right.

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So she seemed to be offering a new political settlement not just to the people who have been famously left behind by the globalisation of finance and labour, but to the entire population. It might be possible to renew Britain’s belief in itself as a country by accepting that we are all responsible for the failure of any of our own communities to thrive – and that includes those who are not often included in the great liberal concern for minorities and incomers.

Mrs May based this philosophy on the principle of what she defined as “fairness”, but this was not what those notorious liberal elites have been calling by that name. It was not government-imposed equality that was fair, but the rewarding of talent and effort. Your chances for success should be determined not by your origins, your race or your gender, but only by your ability and your willingness to work hard. Without the possibility of upward mobility through talent and self-determination, social divisions would become entrenched and ever more bitter.

There is nothing sensationally original about this: every prime minister in living memory has uttered some version of it, including at least one public school toff who clearly had no understanding at all of the deprivations of working-class life. What matters is that Mrs May sounded really serious.

Her most daring opening policy gambit when she took office was a reintroduction of selective schooling, which suggests that this perception is accurate. She says that she wants a society in which your own talent and self-discipline will determine your fate, and in her first weeks in office she proposed a mechanism for delivering it. This is a radical departure from the paternalist, class-guilt definition of fairness which has permeated the doctrines of all the political parties: it does not guarantee equality of outcome but only equality of opportunity. It is, in fact, what most people mean by “fair”: that you should get out of life pretty much what you put in.

Justine Greening, new education secretary, is in charge of helping to create new grammar schools.

But rigorous meritocracy is quite ruthless. To accept it as a basic principle of how society should work raises some uncomfortable questions. Talent and the discipline that is required to develop it are splendid things. There is no question that they should be encouraged and rewarded. But there are many (not just on the Left) who would claim that having talent is itself a kind of privilege and that possessing the self-discipline to develop it is a matter of good fortune.

This is the basis for much of the resistance to grammar schools: those children lucky enough to have innate intelligence and stable, supportive home lives will always be at an advantage. Let me be clear – I do not agree with this view. I think it is positively wicked to try to prevent individuals from fulfilling their potential and excelling. But any political leader who advocates the pursuit of meritocracy as an organising principle of society must be ready to deal with some very deep mysteries of the human condition.

What is talent? A mixture of innate potential and determination? If it is inherited, isn’t that unjust in the same way that great inherited wealth might be? If it is acquired by upbringing, to what extent should government intervene in the raising of children? Is it “unfair” to have conscientious parents or a stimulating home? (Note the influential voices of those who want to penalise “pushy parents”.) Of course, all this determinism can be thrown out on the grounds that many people triumph over adversity and disadvantage to make their successful way in life. But what about those who don’t?

People who feel left behind might turn to ruthless populists.

The most critical danger in a relentlessly meritocratic society is that those with ability and motivation will be able to rise but leave behind a defeatist underclass. To a considerable extent, this has already happened in Britain: many a sentimental elder will tell you of the proud old working-class communities which have lost not just their local industries but their chapel-going, book-reading, self-respecting local leaders as well. The combined effects of the 1944 Education Act and then the property-owning revolution of the Eighties meant precisely that the talented and the ambitious escaped – and left a wasteland behind.

Maybe this is where Mrs May’s controversial interventionism comes in. She speaks of believing in “the good that government can do”. Does she mean providing for those who, for one reason or another, are not able to succeed? If so, that leaves us with the usual welfare trap dilemma. I am trying very hard to understand this – seriously. Maybe what she means is that everybody should achieve as much as they possibly can within whatever their limitations may be, and government should be there to help them in the process. Is that it?